


The Place Between Life and Death

by stalksoftly



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: AFAB Bloodhound (Apex Legends), Other, Unholy Beast Skin, angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:01:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27667157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stalksoftly/pseuds/stalksoftly
Summary: The first time they touch the totem, they feel an ache so deep and harsh they can hardly breathe.
Relationships: Bloodhound/Revenant (Apex Legends)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 79





	The Place Between Life and Death

**Author's Note:**

> i meant to write this around the shadowfall event but as you can see... it took me a bit longer, yikes

The first time they touch the totem, they feel an ache so deep and harsh they can hardly breathe. 

They’d tried to avoid it for a long time, repulsed by the way it was cast with wicked hands, the way those hands belonged to something not quite human, a creation that transcended what was natural. 

The way they’d been raised, nature was divine. Man’s creations were almost always a perversion of it. 

When they’d seen Revenant for the first time, they bristled, remembering tales from their Ellri - tales of taekni engineered with utmost skill only for the purpose of taking lives, tales of man’s hungry desire for immortality, tales of beasts that could coax a wary soul off their righteous path. 

On the battlefield, they’d felt a deep aversion toward the simulacrum and his totem. When an enemy squad cast itself in a sour cloak of shadows, they’d fought with fresh passion, eager to send them all back to their normal bodies. 

They hated the way the other legends touched it without hesitation, seeing it as a simple tool to turn the tides of battle, when Bloodhound knew it was much more. At best, it was a dishonorable way to fight, to buy extra time and stamina in a losing battle. At worst, it was a plunge into darker forces, into something that could corrupt not only flesh, but the heart and mind too. 

Bloodhound couldn’t help but wonder sometimes - where did the bodies of their opponents go, when they touched the humming, glowing figure? Was it the same place they went when stepping through Wraith’s dimensional rifts - another tool Bloodhound didn’t understand, didn’t adore, but didn’t cause them nearly as much ire - did they simply step into another dimension for a moment? 

Was the shadow a protective layer draped over one’s body, like a more malevolent shield? Or was this form, their shadow form, another layer of themselves, one buried so deep and suddenly laid bare for the brunt of whizzing bullets and grenades, while their flesh took a moment of rest in a place unseen?

Bloodhound had often wondered, with an upturned lip and revulsion churning in their gut, but today would set an end to the bitter curiosity they could not bury. 

Revenant had been on their team before. His smug, impolite quips and gestures hadn’t been anything new to them, and with the ongoings of the arena, it’d been easy to brush him off and focus their efforts on the hunt. 

When he cast his totem, it was easy to avoid its warm glow and scraping hum as well - while their team readily slapped a palm onto it and cast themselves away, Bloodhound fought tooth and nail as a beast of the hunt, drawing on the technology they themself had developed, something they readily understood and trusted as something benign and corporeal. 

But this match was something else entirely, something brutal and rough they’d rarely endured, usually taking the role of the squad dishing out the pain. This time, they’d been caught with their pants down while patching up from the battle they’d just won

They’d just taken off their gloves to peel the plastic packaging off Octane’s and Revenant’s syringes, ready to hand them over without a glance or second thought before tending to their own wounds when a deafening roar tore open the skies and brought down a wave of missiles. 

“Airstrike!” Octane had hollered with a disturbing amount of glee in his voice as he dropped the meds that would patch him up in a few seconds and opted for a different syringe. He raced away, amped up with impossible speed that should have saved him from even the most skilled marksman, but Bloodhound gritted their teeth as the shrill sound of a turret tore across the valley. 

Even with his powerful robotic legs kicking up clumps of grass, gathering a mounting heap of momentum with every step, the turret tore through him like he was made of nothing more than thin tissue. Red mist billowed all around him as hundreds of tiny bullets whizzed through him and he stumbled, foot catching on a missile. 

Bloodhound forced their eyes away from the scene, instead turning back to focus on their shaking hands and the other syringe they’d prepped. Caught in a moral dilemma for just a split second, they ignored the kill tracker announcing Octane’s demise and willed themself to focus on the present moment, the present two survivors in their squad - still breathing but badly wounded from the previous battle. 

Something cold and sharp wound its way around their wrist and before they could pull away or reach for their knife, it tugged them into a muddy, sopping ditch. They peered up at the metallic cage-like thing over them and were met with the simulacram’s skull-shaped face plate. 

“Heal yourself, skin bag,” Revenant’s low voice hissed into their ear, and before they could contend, before their moral code to ‘heal the tribe first, heal the self second’ could kick in, Revenant’s tight grip forced them to plunge the syringe into their own wrist. 

The icy feeling of meds shot through their veins, coldest where it had been plunged into their wrist and swelling like a frigid wave through their body within seconds, their racing heart doing all of the work to deliver it to their whole system. The gunshot wound in their leg and the crack in their shoulder blade mended themselves instantly, not without the horrible sensation of nerves buzzing and sizzling all around like TV static as they gritted their teeth. 

Bloodhound would never get used to the feeling. They couldn’t wait to be home, to recuperate with warm tea and herbal remedies and bed rest, to give their body the time to make sense of the trauma it’d been put through, to relish in seeing it heal itself more slowly but always surely, like a softer, gentler miracle than the intense steroids given to them by arena officials. 

They didn’t linger on that thought now, though - survival was always the top priority, no matter how uncomfortable - the missiles Bangalore had called in had started to detonate across the valley. 

They knew their body was patched up now, but that didn’t mean their shield had been repaired and that they could make it through the onslaught of heavy artillery - and even if they could, it would mean they’d have to dodge the turret mounted high upon the hill and the gunfire of two more people after the storm had passed. 

Revenant was still poised over them like a protective cage - they’d never been this close to him, but every part of him seemed to be made of unwavering steel. Sure, his synthetic nervous system had responded to the grenade that had cracked one of his metal femurs earlier, but Bloodhound couldn’t imagine the simulacrum being deterred by anything that wasn’t a full barrel of shotgun shells. If anything, for just a millisecond, they felt safe without their evo shield, safe beneath Revenant’s seemingly unbreakable form instead of repulsed by it. 

As the deafening roar of missiles began to roll across the valley, their sense of security quickly faded, especially when the simulacrum leapt off them and back onto his haunches. 

“All healed?” he shouted gruffly, optics scanning the battlefield. 

“Yes, but,” they replied with equal desperation. “I need shields!” 

Revenant’s head flicked back to them with a disturbing, inhuman snap. His optics went from their usual orange glow to a deeper shade of red, like a hellish ember brought to life. 

“Don’t have any,” he grunted, scuttling backwards and away from them, behind another boulder in the valley, just inches away from the red laser sight of the turret, the one that’d been roving the battlefield seeking its next victim and unable to find them in the muddy ditch. Its whirring started up for a moment, as if to warn them of its presence, but it mellowed out again, unable to focus in on its target. 

“I do have something, though.” 

Bloodhound tensed at the tone of his voice, so deep and gravelly, as if it’d also been caked in mud, sullied and dirty. Taut with adrenaline, they shook their head. Their eyes, though, couldn’t themselves away from the simulacrum, the way he looked completely unafraid despite their horrible position, as if the physical and mental pain of their imminent loss dangling over their heads was just a tiny mosquito buzzing around him rather than their horrifying reality. 

They knew what had to happen next. A knot pooled in their belly, another horrible wave of ice surging through their veins. 

“Join me in the shadows,” he said into the comms, voice suddenly so soft, low, as if already half swept away to another place, but so near and intimate in Bloodhound’s earpiece that not even the missiles around them could drown it out. His hands danced before him for a second as he drew up the totem, as if painting it onto the battlefield, as if painting it into reality with just his hands. It suddenly rose from the mud, completely untarnished and quivering like a flame. 

Revenant clapped his hands around it without hesitation, instantly transformed into a dark, crackling shadow. Before Bloodhound could argue with him, before they could protest, he had galloped across the battlefield, dodging the turret beam with ease. 

Bloodhound shook their head, jaw tight. They peered over their cover, but it was difficult to find an opening for engagement, even with the demon already giving Rampart some trouble as he forced her off her minigun. Bangalore had her R-99 poised expertly in her hands and had already begun to empty magazines around the shadow, with one eye undoubtedly still scanning the area for the other member in their party. 

Bloodhound tentatively tapped their sonar for more information, to find the final squadmate, maybe a weak link they could attack stealthily, but their sonar tipped off the entire team. Bangalore’s head snapped in their direction as she reloaded and - 

Pain. Searing pain drowned out the sound of the R-99, of Revenant’s animalistic growls, of Rampart’s volt - everything was still as Bloodhound hit the floor, blood pooling in their helmet. 

Their gun shrieking like a discordant note from a trumpet, a third unseen squadmate had shot at them with a tripletake. Bloodhound had barely made out their position when one of the three bullets had stuck, knocking them down with agony. 

They grunted and heaved into their ventilator, their face feeling so hot and sticky from where the side of their head had been clipped. 

All the options raced through their mind at once but they concluded that they wouldn’t survive any more injuries, if they even had the strength to dodge anything. Even their own technology couldn’t save them now, not without risking a dangerous amount of blood loss with the way it amped up their senses.

They began to crawl, gloved hands gripping the earth beneath them, almost as if their body had a life of its own, almost as if their body wanted them to survive more than their soul wanted to remain pure. 

The sniper shot again, raining bits of matter over them, but Bloodhound persisted, their mind finally set, almost peaceful with intense determination. 

They reached the glowing totem. It was so bright it almost hurt their eyes, but they couldn’t turn away - something was drawing them to it, something unseen. They knew it wasn’t just their instinct and they knew it wasn’t any sort of temporal, logical appeal. Its warmth seemed to caress their face, its hum thrummed deeply inside their chest. 

“Forgive me,” they muttered quietly to themself, shaking away the feeling they couldn’t understand. Survival, survival, survival, it was all that mattered. The Allfather would always understand. 

They closed their eyes, reached a hand up and caressed the totem back. 

At first, it seemed like nothing had happened - Bloodhound shook their head again, mystified, almost cursing the simulacrum for having fooled them and ready to fight to the bitter end in their injured state - but the sharp twinge of iron flooded their nose. 

Then, they felt something hot, smooth, hard beneath their bare hand. Stunned for a moment, they brushed their thumb over the surface and immediately shuddered, yanking their hand back - when had they lost their glove? The sensation was strange. 

They opened their eyes and were met with the stark white of bone, almost blinding against endless humming darkness all around them. 

They blinked, their vision finally putting pieces together despite the stabbing pain inside their skull.

Before them was a horned creature with piercing eyes, 

“Never thought you’d join me here,” the skull hummed without moving its mouth. Bloodhound instantly recognized the gravelly tone - the simulacrum. 

“Where are we?” they asked, nursing their hand against their chest like a fluttering bird. They rubbed their wrist, now too focused on the horned apparition to wonder about their gloves. His presence had always been compelling, but there was something even more hypnotizing about him now - the way he floated before them with such gentle ease. 

The simulacrum raised his skeletal hands, tipped with red claws. He mimed quotation marks. 

“‘The place between life and death’.”

Bloodhound furrowed their brows. 

He continued. 

“Do you feel alive now, skinsuit?” His expression was still flat, but his optics whirred. The lilting tone of his voice revealed more than his face plate was able to.

They peeled their eyes away from him, suddenly feeling too exposed underneath his gaze. They peered around and found… more darkness. Inky black, but it wasn’t nothingness. As their eyes roamed, the darkness seemed to pulse and wriggle, like something was buried inside it. In one ear, they heard the shrill cry of a crow. They shivered again, feeling so cold. The only source of light, the only source of warmth seemed to be emanating from the skeleton in front of them. 

Without looking up, hand still clutched against their chest, they shook their head. 

“You mean to mock me,” they said plainly, stubbornly, some resistance blooming in their chest. 

“Oh, I don’t mean anything by it,” he replied, leaning closer to them. “If anything, I’m glad you joined me. We can get to know each other a little better. You can’t hide anything here.” 

Bloodhound turned to face him again and gasped, suddenly aware of their lack of gloves, lack of gear, lack of mask. Their hands flew to their bare face, fully exposed to the simulacrum’s whirring optics, which seemed to spin more acutely with their realization. 

“Why hide a pretty face like this?” he said, bringing a skeletal hand to their cheek. It was so careful, so featherlight, so warm amidst the cold darkness around them that Bloodhound allowed it, almost welcomed it. They didn’t recoil. They remained still. 

“Unfair for you to bring me here,” they said, voice unnervingly calm despite the dozen emotions unraveling inside their chest. “To strip me bare and expose me. When you are always the same.” 

A flicker showed them something unexpected, something they didn’t fully understand. A man stood before them with human eyes, a fully human form - his expression was tense, brows knotted. They didn’t know what to make of him, so they did the first thing that felt natural. 

They reached their hand forward to stroke his cheek, mirroring the gesture the simulacrum had performed on them. 

The vision of the man before them broke their gaze, as if feeling shy, as if needing to hide the ache his eyes revealed. They tried to brush his skin tenderly, an unknowing need to comfort him growing inside them, but their fingers passed through him, and with another flicker, he was gone. Their hand met the warm, bony face plate instead. 

Revenant’s optics met their eyes again. 

They didn’t remove their hand though, too startled, too moved by the simulacrum’s rare moment of vulnerability.

“Do you really think the masks we wear are part of who we are?” his voicebox hissed quietly. 

“Do you listen to everything I have to say so closely?” they asked, brows furrowing. 

“You’re interesting,” he replied. Bloodhound willed themself to focus on him and not the pounding in their chest, the way neither of their hands seemed to want to budge.

They scoffed. 

“I’d give anything to be the man I once was, before everything. Flesh and bone. A regular skinsuit.” He almost let out a chuckle, but the conviction in his voice held it back. “I thought for sure you must be scarred up. Hiding something. To dress yourself up like an ugly little robot every day. Can’t be comfortable inside that suit of yours.”

“Without my mask, all people do is make assumptions. I serve a greater purpose. I do not need to waste time with petty glances.” Their words were vague, but they couldn’t possibly unpack everything. The story was too long, too complex. They knew Revenant’s was too.

“Hmm,” the simulacrum rumbled, low. His optics spun again, as if zooming in on their features. They broke his gaze again, the feeling of being inspected like this too foreign, too intense. “Shame. That’s a damn shame,” he said, grasping their jaw firmly and tilting their face to the side. 

Bloodhound begged their heart to stop racing, sure that the simulacrum would feel it with his fingers against their pulse like this. 

As if reading their mind, he leaned in closer. 

“Do I make you nervous?” 

They swallowed sharply, shaking their head. 

The simulacrum’s hand slipped back to the nape of their neck. His skeletal fingers wove into the thick curls against their scalp and tugged firmly. 

They couldn’t stifle their gasp. 

“You’re not fighting me off,” he pressed on, leaning in so close that his faceplate met their ear. “Interesting.” 

His voice was so low, so frayed with static that Bloodhound’s skin broke into a wave of goosebumps. They swallowed again, unable to answer - they didn’t have the answer for themself either. It was as if the darkness lapping at them, ebbing all around them had disabled their defense mechanisms. The way it clung to them and pushed against them, all that was left for them was raw, unfiltered instinct - the instinct that left them static, almost like prey, in the grasp of the simulacrum. It forced them to look at themself, to understand that their hatred of him had always been mixed with fascination because of whatever compelled them to give way to his whims now. 

They felt it deep in their gut when he gave their hair another tug. 

“We should do this again sometime,” his fraying voice hummed into their ear. They could barely process the way his other hand had guided itself to their hip. 

“Are you leaving already?” they managed to choke out. 

His spidery fingers traced lower, dancing for a moment around their thigh. They shivered again, squirming at the lightness of his touch. 

“Our time’s almost up,” he said. They thought they could read disappointment in his tone, even between the static fry warping his voice. He felt warmer than before - almost burning hot, pressed against their cheek like this. 

“Let me leave with a souvenir,” he went on. His hand dancing by their thigh stopped its languid motions and dipped between their legs. 

They gasped at the contact, a mix of surprise and pleasure when one of his fingers parted them and dipped inside. 

It didn’t linger - they almost whined - instead, the simulacrum leaned back and pulled himself away from them completely. 

He held out his hand in front of his own face and spread his fingers wide, admiring the thin trails of wetness spun between thumb and forefinger. 

“I-” Bloodhound started but the horned beast before them had already begun to fade.

“Join me again sometime,” Revenant stated, more a command than an invitation. 

Suddenly, a rush of noise filled their ears and brightness flooded their eyes, almost blinding them for a moment. Overwhelmed, they stumbled forward, onto their knees, onto the soft earth of King’s Canyon, hands still shaking. 

They peered at their hands, once again gloved, but ragged and stained with blood, their raven’s bite on the ground before them. The noise, the rush persisted but slowly started to piece itself together again - it was the triumphant cry of the announcer’s voice over the victory song they knew all too well. 

“We have our Apex Champions.” 

Something hooked around their waist and pulled them to their feet - they jumped, but it only held them tighter. The voice of the simulacrum was there again, low and close to their ear. 

“Smile for the cameras.” 

Around them lay a smattering of bullet shells, empty magazines, syringes - the debris of battle, all sprinkled around a half dozen death boxes, giving the slaughtered a moment of dignity in front of the cameras before the medics and respawn technicians performed the magic of piecing everyone back to life. 

“Where are we?” they asked, their mind feeling completely scrambled. Had they just imagined their encounter with the simulacrum, the strange stasis he’d trapped them in? Had they just been overwhelmed by the effects of the totem, by- 

“You’re smarter than that,” Revenant bit harshly into their ear, his usual gruffness back in place already. “Enjoy our victory and stop asking me dumb questions.” 

They pulled away from him, but the game moderators and photographers crowding in upon them pushed them together again. They made gestures, commands, all taking at once, all preening Bloodhound and Revenant for the celebratory footage. 

Unable to let it go, equally stubborn as the simulacrum, they pulled him close again to huff into where his audial sensors might’ve been. 

“The totem, the place between - ah - was that all real?” 

Revenant’s face plate remained unchanged, but his low chuckle told them all they needed to know.

“Join me in the shadows again and find out”

**Author's Note:**

> so this ended up being longer than intended, i couldn't finish it for a long long time and at some point i was like - who on earth would want to read this pairing? but as usual, i was compelled to write it for whatever reason! also i wanted to say that the comments yall left on jötunn??? absolutely made my day :-)


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